The Endorsement Series (Part 1 in however many merit it)

It's new, sort of. It's spongy, sort of. It's a cleaning miracle, for sure.

This is my second favorite household, inanimate best friend: the magic eraser.

Sure, stick magic in the name of something and I'll fall for it. But this is more than that. This sucked up that green-brown crap that grows on my shower curtain. Then I took it into the kitchen and it licked my appliances cleaner than they deserve to be. I ran out of things to use it on, so I retured it to under the bathroom sink with its untainted partner until I am faced with another unbelieveable mess that leaves me feeling hopeless and underinsured. Two magic erasers for roughly $3.50. Best of all, the box gives a pictorial lesson on when to throw it away so you don't feel stupid for using something that is decaying before your eyes.

Let's just say it lights up my life.

Kudos to housewife extraordinaire Leigh for turning me on to the magic eraser -- in addition to margarita lunches, power walks, and google chats, Leigh still finds the time to make lattes for her man early in the morning, make cocktails for her friends late in the night and keep the bathroom magically clean for when the elements don't agree. And yes, magic erasers are acceptable birthday presents.

Mack and Cheese

It's one of those days, where you open your eyes with a gush of emotion that tries to bowl you over into fantasy land with love. One of those days where people stuck in reality want to vomit at the sight of you and hate what comes out of your mouth mostly because they are jealous or tired of hearing it. I know, I am those people on more days than not, but today, I'm one of those gushy in love kinds, and it feels so good.
I love Mack. I love him so much it actually hurts, and makes me dumb, and wears me out, and depresses me, and brings me to tears, and steals my breath, and pushes me into a loneliness I've never touched before, and makes me insecure, and terrifies me, and isolates me, and makes me hungry and afraid and worthless and sick. So much that sometimes I want to die than think of a life without him.

And it's not just something that I feel anymore either. Loving Mack has become a way of life for me and if loving him ever gets taken away, I won't know how to exist. I enjoy his company, am in awe of his mind, have found my perfect match, am inspired by his strength. He has breathed life into my living, broken the bonds of comfortability to reveal possibility and allowed me to experience my short time on this planet rather than agonize about its end and waste time preparing for its postponement. It's thrilling to be with him, to feel the energy come off of him, to experience it quickening my heartbeat. He is magical and whimsical and superhuman.

I love Mack. I love him so much it makes me fearless, and gives me the confidence to go anywhere and do anything, and lets me sleep soundly every night, and picks me up off the ground when life pushes me face down in it, and fulfills me the way religion does for some people, and makes me feel safe and protected and secure, and teaches me to be kind and forgiving, and empowers me to stand up for what I think, and makes me calm, and inspires me to be a better person, and makes everyday worth living, and brings a smile to my face at the very thought of it, and overwhelms me, and is all I'll ever need and more than I ever expected.

I guess it's just one of those days.

The Writers Almanac

Garrison Keillor took center stage at the Norton Center for the Arts in Danville, Ky., last night in a charcoal suit split down the middle with an American-red tie and grounded by faded red Saucony sneakers. His familiar voice ran 150 yards to reach me in the nose bleed section of the right wing (I did, however, get an actual seat... Liz, my date 6 rows behind me, was in an office chair). We arrived a few minutes late, having underestimated Danville's potential for parking woes. I held the two people closest to the aisle for balance as I walked in darkness to my seat, letting out a chuckle I blamed on Garrison but which was really aimed at the old man already asleep in the seat next to me. Why do old people spend so much money on tickets just to nap in public? Suckers.

I laughed at all the right places and appreciated the words that painted pictures familiar to me -- independent relatives with the courage not to conform, dry communities focused more on their feet than what's going on around them to preserve their comfortable simplicity, hand-me-downs and church meetings.

"They'd always say, 'Why waste a ten dollar haircut on a 59 cent head?'"

I was falling in love with the embodiment of the voice that had ridden home with me from Louisville so many Sunday afternoons. I knew he was an ugly man, a face scrunched up and sour, but I was far enough away to appreciate his stature. And, he was funny. I've always been a sucker for funny. His voice was so familiar, so rhythmic, so comfortable.

I jerked awake upon feeling my head drop to my chest. How long was I out? Surely I just dozed off for a second. Yeah, he's still telling that story about his cousin Kate "celebrating a commitment" and the Lutheran ministers visiting. The jerk brings me back a second time. What is my problem? Why did I pay $40 for a nap? Come on, how much did I miss? Okay, good, he's still talking about his cousin Kate "celebrating a commitment" and the Lutheran ministers visiting. I dozed off 20 more times, always to wake up to the same part of the same story. It was like Groundhog Day and I was Bill Murray trapped in a lecture wanting to love it but starting to resent it, hearing his voice was enchanting at first, and, like any good lover, it ended up a boring drone. The only difference was that in my recurring daydream, time was advancing.

We ended up leaving with our disappointment trying to trump our fond memories, but I don't think they'll end up succeeding. Garrison with clever "commercials" on Sunday afternoons or reciting poetry on the way to work is the Garrison I love. The old man droning on and forcing me into early retirement is not Garrison. That is Mr. Keillor.

"Writers are vacuum cleaners who suck up other people's lives and weave them into stories like a sparrow builds a nest from scraps." ~Garrison Keillor

"It's better to be burnished with use than rusty with principle." ~Garrison Keillor

"Years ago, manhood was an opportunity for achievement, and now it is a problem to be overcome." ~Garrison Keillor

"English is the perfect language for preachers because it allows you to talk until you think of what to say." ~Garrison Keillor

Winter Olympics de Amber

In the spirit of winter and to have a better appreciation for the athletes competing in the Olympics right now, my pal Leigh and I took to the ice last night.
Seeing as I am back in Lexington, there aren't too many choices for ice skating venues, so we headed to the Christian rink which also stars a Jesus-inspired putt putt course. After being reminded of the ten commandments posted next to the cashier's window, we headed over to skate rental for some of the world's most aromatic skates and to begin our ankle workout.
Leigh is a natural, but she had the privilege of ice skating lessons when she was a kid. I, on the other hand, was gifted with a roller skating gene, and while at first it seems like the roller skating gift can be easily transitioned to the ice skating one, that is not the case. To my credit, I didn't wipe out once, more out of fear of breaking my new mini-dig camera than out of fear of falling.

I started to get the hang of it just as the ice was starting to be blanketed with hockey skate scrape and as the hockey players started to chase each other through the crowd. Then I started dodging death. It's been a while since I'd tasted middle school, and after last night's experience, I'm glad to be in the almost thirty era of life.

I'm not sore today, except for the scrape/blister thing on the inside of my ankle and the bruise on my shin from the front of the skate. I think I'm almost ready for the next Olympics, but in the meantime, the U.S. better start bringing it... Medal count to date has Norway with 16 and US with a wimpy 12 (Russia is even beating US with 13). We do have the most golds, with 7 so far, but that's only one more than Russia and Germany. Maybe if I'd discovered the Kwanness in me before last night...

Operation: Visit Family

Politics are by far our greatest hindrance as an earthly society. I'm planning to go to Iran this summer with Mack and his family to visit his extended family still living there, and man, do politics make it difficult. Pictures, letters of purpose, letters explaining how your expenses will be covered, applications, contact information for the people you know who will claim you in the country, father's name (this adds an element of confusion since my dad's last name is different from my own -- something rarely seen in Iran, I'm sure). Fortunately, his mom knows how to jump through the hoops and she's handling our visas, etc., so I don't have to understand how to navigate those obstacles. But, even with all her talents, she might not be able to get us visas. Which is so stupid to me. This year she has to apply for our visas from within the country. The Pakistan embassy, which the visas go through, isn't letting non-Iranians apply for visas from the U.S., so Shahin has to go to Iran, talk to the embassy there, get our visas and then send them over to us. Who knows what the state of their and our unions will be by then.

All this trouble because of politics, because religion has become the scapegoat for politicians who can't stand on their own two feet, so they stand on the shoulders of religion. Extremist muslims are as bad as extremist christians, which might actually be worse because they pretend like they're not extremist. That god, the foundation of love, could be blamed for creating this rift in humanity has got to be disappointing and condemnable to him, but who am I to judge? I don't think there's that much measurable difference between muslim and christian beliefs... both believe in Jesus, both believe in the ten commandments, at their core they are the same. Like the Bible goes one chapter further than the Torah, which the Jewish faith is based on, the Koran goes one chapter further than the Bible.

But these religious differences aren't something that keep people apart. I've drunk tea in muslim homes in Morocco, walked in muslim downtowns in capri pants and a tank top and had people whose language I didn't understand show me pictures from their family's recent wedding, had muslim taxi drivers watch over me while I waited for Mack to come back, and watched very white people who were raised with the father, son and the holy ghost forfeit their Western wear in favor of a head scarf. In my mind, to each his own. In the minds of the muslims I've met, to each his own. The only reason religion gets infused with hatred is politics.

Politics start using religion as a platform and cause deep, personal rifts between societies. It sums up people and cultures and breeds fear among them, which perpetuates ignorance. I'm not exactly a muslim, I'm not exactly a christian, I'm not exactly jewish or buddhist or hindu or wiccan. Each has words of wisdom worth living by, each has strategies for living that are better than my own, each has love and respect at its core. So none are bad. What is bad is how we let politics corrupt our religions, especially when there is text that exists in all of them that command a respect for life and a love of thy neighbor.

To go to Iran, I had to submit a photograph in which I "respected Islamic dress," which basically translates into "put on a disguise before you come over." Iran's government is more strict about dress in public than Morocco is, but the people are not the government. And it's the people that have made every place I've ever been worth visiting.

No More Amber-Flavored Nougat

The last two years of my life have been spent cultivating an alternative monthly artcentric magazine called Nougat. I've cried and beamed and gotten depressed and felt like a complete failure and burst with pride and tasted pure optimism and idealism and experienced a depth of generosity that I never knew existed in the past two years. Nougat has been one of the hardest things I've ever attempted in my life, and while it didn't make me rich, it did give me invaluable experience and priceless friendships. I had the best excuse in the world to be more than I am and to talk to people I as lowly Amber would never have had the courage to talk to. Amber, Nougat's publisher, had to chase fast walker man down the street at 2 am requesting an interview. Amber, Nougat's publisher, had to stand up for gay rights and attend Vote No! rallies. Amber, Nougat's publisher, had to attend the women writers conference and chauffeur respected photographer Carrie Mae Weems around Lexington. Amber, Nougat's publisher, had to help artist Kurt Gohde with his celebrity fortune cookies. Regular Amber would have been too insecure to think her words of wisdom were wise. She'd have had nothing interesting to tell Carrie about when she was in the car. She'd still be looking for the safe, secure way to live, terrified that trying something risky means certain foreclosure. In the last two years, I discovered that following your dreams really means being willing to be a waitress for a little while. It's hard, don't get me wrong, but I wouldn't change one thing about the last two years... not my business partner, not the stories we covered, not the fact that we made no money, nothing.

I just finished working on my last issue of Nougat about an hour ago. It's not being laid to rest, it's fortunately just changing hands. Jennie Leavell, who started Lexington's original alternative in 1989, is assuming my post, which is the only reason I feel excited about leaving Nougat. I know she'll be great and the magazine will stay focused and keep being a voice for the underdogs... by underdogs I mean the minority of people who still have the courage to speak up for things.

And, turns out, this issue is one of the best. It's loaded with chewy, sweet goodness. I'll be autographing my finale copy at the Dame on Feb. 20 at 8pm if you want to come by. This chapter closes... the other can't wait to open!

(For anyone who's ever wondered where the name Nougat came from, well, it's from the definition, which was sort of our unstated mission statement/reminder of what to be... a confection made from mixing nuts and sometimes fruit pieces in a sugar paste whose composition is varied to give either a chewy or brittle consistency. Yummy.)

Baby Not Mine Part deux (and Trois)

Leiah, the third daughter in our troop of four Hensley girls, is having a baby. As most of you know, this has been a somewhat scary thing for us to come to grips with, but then again the unknown is always scary and since we just started the journey into marriages with Shannon a year and a half ago (at the infantile age of only 28!!), we Hensleys take a little longer to bloom than most. Baby was a little fast forward for us steady pacers, but Leiah is the first to blaze that path, and she's lighting the fire under our butts with reality. Ouch, aww, and hooray, all rolled into one.
Here's second generation Hensley's first debut for the masses. Much like its mother to be did at its tender age of nine weeks, it mirrors a bug of sorts. My mom told me the other day that Leiah got her nickname Leiah Buggy/Bug Wug/Buggy, and hence her affinity for lady bugs, because when my mom saw her on ultra sound for the first time, she looked like a bug running around. Turns out, Leiah's spawn is already like her, something I for one am happy about. So far, so good.

The due date has been set for around Labor Day, adding a second layer to the holiday.

Another bit of baby news reached me the other day as well. David Schanding, the least likely to get married, and his bride Lisa, who must be on a mission from god, will welcome a new baby to their family of three this year too. Jonah, known to some as Dark Vader (his error, not mine), will be a big brother, and David will finally get to be that great daddy he's always wanted to be. Lisa, well she's already as nice as a human can possibly be, so she'll just stick to her mommying ways, doing what she does best. Congrats to the new generation of baby boomers. Now, if you guys could just let me catch my breath before anyone else dumps baby news on me, I'd appreciate it. Whew.

What in the universe is a Pluot?

To be honest, I'd heard of the pluot before seeing it from my Cali gal Leigh (WHO NOW DESERVES ENDLESS THANKS FOR WATCHING V-To-Tha-Nus... Thanks Leigh!), whose relocation to Lexington at the very least served to broaden my Kentucky horizons. She's a true California gal... the kind that looks more like Memoirs of a Geisha than Clueless... and hence has a taste for the finer things. So when Leigh says seek out and find, it's usually worth your while to do as she says.

Which is why after school today, I cunningly asked Laila and Mack if they wanted to go on a bus adventure to the pet shop on La Brea Avenue. The real reason I wanted to sneak up to that stretch of LA was to go to Ralph (CA version of Kroger) to discover the pluot before I head back to the KY. In the midst of limes, pineapples, avocados, oranges, nectarines, mangos, peaches, coconuts, persimmons, pomegranates (which I also discovered last week and YUMMY!!), tangerines and star fruits, the plums and apricots sat innocently next to one another. I'd found them, so where was their offspring? Where was this marriage of tastes unlike anything I've tried before?

Duh, on a pedestal right next to them.

For $4.99 a pound, I bought enough pluots to get a good sampling in case some were riper or less ripe than others -- oh yeah, and to share them with other pluot virgins if they made it to the fruit bowl in time. I should note that there were about four varieties of plum next to two varieties of apricot, so finding the pluot was an accomplishment in itself. The pet shop ended up being a bust with only about three birds, so we had to go to the Beverly Center so I could redeem myself (that's where the adorable tiny puppies and bunnies are -- and the Apple store that puts a smile on Mack's face) and the pluots landed in my oversized bag for three hours until we made it home.

Turns out the pluot is about the juiciest fruit I've ever put in my mouth. It's like a plum with pizazz, more plum than apricot for sure. Instead of being a plum and an apricot that get together, it's more like a menage a trois starring two plums and an apricot. I remember when my mom brought home star fruit for the first time and how my thirst had never been so quenched. That was sort of how the pluot felt. Fruits having experimental sex really pays off.

One of the things I am going to miss the most in my interim back in KY before we move out here is the fruit. I can walk out the door, go across the street and have a nice Mexican woman with a fruit cart cut up a bag of cantaloupe, honeydew, mango, coconut, pineapple, you name it, just for me for three whole dollars. Every time Mack's mom comes home from the Iranian market, she brings back bags of fresh fruit, with none costing more than 99 cents per pound. I've eaten my weight in fruit since I've been out here and am going to have a void that bananas, apples and oranges won't come close to filling. And the weather, well, today was 85 degrees here... 28 in Lexington. Come on, seriously.

Fishing for Stars

Getting SCUBA certified a few years ago, I realized that underwater is another world. I've always loved the water and always been a little freaked out by it. Rip tides, sharks, jellyfish, alligators, baracudas -- they're all enticing and curious and from another world and another time. When I did my SCUBA dive I saw blowfish and sand swirls and it was awesome... until I fell overboard as we were departing to go back to shore. (Amber Grace Scott, you know me, not prone to accidental falls for no apparent reason.) I've walked the shore for seashells and had the privilege of being around as someone else pulled a sand dollar from the water, but my personal experience to aquatic living has been a little sheltered. Since adopting the policy of try everything once a couple years ago, I've swallowed my fear and opted for experience, no matter how gross or scary it might seem.

This weekend at the Santa Monica Pier, I got to get up close and personal with some sea life. I saw whale vertebrae, which are as big around as I am, put my hand in a blubber glove, which was actually quite cozy, and shook hands with starfish, sea urchins, sea cucumbers and a sea slug. They were all a little smooshy, except for the pointy urchins, which slowly grab your finger when you touch their toothpick hair (the volunteers cleverly call this urchin bite a "hug" so the kiddies won't be scared).
The sea slug was so soft and smooth I, of course, wanted a sweater made out of it. The starfish were a rainbow of colors and shapes and sizes. Starfish are so cool, because (and this is the only information I retained from Ms. Shropshire's biology class) when they lose an arm or have a piece of them ripped off, that piece just grows into a whole nother starfish (it's called asexual, ahem). I've never seen a starfish in real life, so getting to touch them was just icing on the cake.
It was a treat to exercise the old touch sense. I've been getting my olfactory exercise with trips to Victoria's Secret to smell all the perfumes as a means of entertaining Laila, my sights have been overdosing in this place with so much to see, Limewire and NPR's All Songs Considered podcast tuned my ears, and the Thai, Indian, Mexican, Thai, Ethiopian, Japanese, Thai, Greek, Persian, Persian, Persian that I've been eating have over-exercised my tasting ability. But touch has been something I only got to do on quick trips home and thanks to my family and friends' tolerance of my touchy feely needs.

A Little Celebrity

I've only had a couple celebrity run-ins since landing in LA. To be honest, I think I'm only programmed to care about celebs when they land on the pages of US Weekly or Star or InTouch or any one of the other vacant brain reads I prey upon at the airport. My first sighting, of Donna Martin, who some of you may know as Tori Spelling, happened at the park across from our complex. It was actually a defensive response, since she was oogling my five-year-old accomplice a little too adoringly. In mid-front/accusatory glare, I realized I recognized her from middle school. Only thing is in real life, Donna Martin's head is way too big for her body and her boobs are just ridiculous. They look like they're floating in water -- her head and her boobs.


A few days later while having my better sense zapped in the presence of adorable puppies for adoption, Mack's mom pointed out my second sighting... Everybody Loves Raymond's wife. She was there with her sons, admiring the puppies and looking just like she does in the show, which I've only watched because Bubba is a sit-com junkie and had control of the remote when I first got here. (As an aside, kudos to Bubba, Mack's brother, for his recent earning of a commercial pilot's license. Private pilot can be checked off my list of things to get.)

My most meaningful celebrity sighting happened two days ago at the Santa Monica Pier. Like most piers, there are a lot of quirky street performers earning one buck at a time showcasing talents most of us keep hidden. We saw a strange Indian girl dancing to no music for a video camera at one corner of the pier, fishermen casting off the end of it, a black woman singing R&B halfway down it, a Korean sculptor making amazingly detailed busts of regular people by the Mexican restaurant, and this guy.
You may recognize him as Arthur Nakane, the one-man band who appeared on the Jimmy Kimmel show one February not too long ago. I didn't know him as anyone other than the guy in two different colors of socks with bad teeth at the Pier until his mic targeted us as we walked past. Look closely at the photo to see the extent of craftsmanship contained in his musical machine. PVC piping has never been more versatile, a drum stick has never been so efficient, keyboards have never been so modified, and a Rubbermaid storage container has never been such a critical component of a recording system. Arthur knows what is up. He knows.

Which is why it's too bad he's retiring this year. After finding out where we were from, what we were doing in LA, what all of our names are, and if we are musicians too, he finally did a customized rendition of Candy Girl (goes something like, Sugar, ahhh Honey Honey, You are my candy girl, and you've got me wanting you) for Mack, Laila, Shahin and Amber. Not exactly my tastes, but flattering none the less. I just hope that doesn't count as my 15 minutes of fame.

For more info on Arthur, check out this. After reading it, I think he might just be the most important, and certainly the most talented, celebrity I've met so far.

(One more aside... we finally had a dreary day in LA. It was still pretty warm and there was lots to do, but here's the drear on the pier... just to make you 27-degree readers of blog feel better...)